FEATURE
ZONE 2012
In the Zone Back in 2011 Stuart and Aide Smith launched the first ever UK ‘Zone’ competition. Born out of the evolution of 3D flight and the need for a new style format, the original Zone 2011 included many of the best features from normal tournament events and a similar judging criterion. The first event proved extremely popular with amazing feedback from all those taking part. This year Zone took place at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, Somerset and although it wasn’t an established model show, as such, the event still drummed up huge support. The Fleet Air Arm Museum is a great location, displaying a huge aviation history with full-size aeroplanes and helicopters from many eras and it’s a great family day out. Over the last weekend in May the museum grounds played host to the Zone 2012 event, which was also supported by sponsors such as Horizon Hobby, Climbout RC and Hobby Hangar. The flight line was a magnificent vast and spacious area, spread over a concrete runway with a safe area for spectators and competitors alike. Just a few miles up the road there was the ‘Zone Village’, a very accommodating local hotel that not only had a wonderful bar and restaurant, but also an adjoining field to be used as an evening flying site. A tiptop location indeed.
are up for grabs for each flight and the pilot with the most points wins that match before moving on in the competition. These points are awarded from five judging categories. The competition has five key stages as follows:
GROUP QUALIFICATIONS:
Team Mikado pick up the prizes. The 2012 worthy winner was Jamie Robertson
In this stage there are eight groups from A to H. This year saw 24 contestants, meaning three pilots per group. The group qualifiers are flown on day one with the top two from each going through to the finals on day two. An important note is that the top eight of the 24 are seeded into the different groups, so by the end of the first day’s competition we end up with 16 finalists going through to second day’s knock-out stages.
THE ZONE FORMAT SAW ITS SECOND UK COMPETITION HELD TOWARDS THE END OF MAY. WITH A FANTASTIC NEW VENUE AND SOME OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST PILOTS, THIS EXCITING WEEKEND OF HELI MADNESS PROVED TO BE ONE NOT TO MISS. JAMIE COLE WAS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE JUDGES AT THIS EVENT, BUT ALSO ROTORWORLD’S EYE AT THE SKY! KNOCK-OUT STAGES This is a little easier to follow and here we have the classic finalists just like any other knock-out competition. The final 16 competitors go into 8 Vs style matches and these in turn go down to the final eight pilots into four matches. The final four then go into two matches. The ultimate final results in a fly-off match for 1st down to 4th. In total there was 80 competitive rounds flown over the two days.
JUDGING The Zone event uses possibly the fairest, most accurate method to judge a 3D helicopter competition, in my opinion. Many current formats, used at other events, although good, are still based on the old FAI routines, where
THE ZONE COMPETITION FORMAT Pilots fly ‘one on one’ or a vs. style match consisting of three minutes to please the judges with a flight to music! The easiest way to describe it is a cross between the World cup and Wimbledon. Five points
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the score is averaged between five judges. However, these five judges are only looking at one or two aspects of the flight, based around accuracy, positioning and the overall appearance of the flights, therefore the judging becomes a matter of educated and reasonable personal opinion. Yes accuracy, positioning and the overall appearance are an important factor, but so is the technicality of the flight, the variety of what is being flown, the wow factor and, of course, how the whole 3D flight is put together and how it flows to the music. Attempting to judge all of these factors accurately across 80 flights or more is a formidable task. Breaking the flight down into certain key elements gives each judge a clear bench-mark to accurately evaluate and all of a sudden the competition results become much clearer for both the judges and the competing pilots. More importantly, pilots can look to earn points from the judges in a clear defined fashion. There are five key areas and one dedicated judge per area: • Judge 1: Technical • Judge 2: Variety • Judge 3: Innovation • Judge 4: Excitement and Crowd Appeal (E&C) • Judge 5: Precision Smart pilots will look to play to their strengths. They only need three of the five points to win their match and they’re through to the next round. And this is where I love this competition as it also becomes quite tactical. From previous experience I’ve found that it appears to drive the best out of every pilot.
ON THE DAY I should probably add at this point that I was one of the five judges at the event, the others were Adrian Smith, Peter Roper, Trevor Roper and Trevor Waterfield. On day one we travelled from the Zone Village (also known as the Half Way House), which is where most of the competitors were staying. The Yeovilton site is less than a five minute drive from the Zone Village and when we got there we were presented with the most fantastic facilities at the Fleet Air Arm museum. The weather was the best I’ve seen this year to date with 25° plus temperatures although there was a strong wind blowing very across the site. The commentator for the event was Nick Johnson, a thoroughly likeable chap and a keen heli pilot who knew his stuff. Nick did a stunning job all weekend, keeping everyone informed, entertained and of course keeping the competition running smoothly. At about 10.30am the competition got underway, with all the pilots curious to see who they had been drawn against. Clearly nobody wanted to be pitted against last year’s Zone winner, Duncan Osbourne, or even Jamie Robertson who had won the 3D Masters in 2011!
The judges tent with Peter Roper and Ade Smith in deep discussion The nitro machines present did very well thanks to the new larger O.S. 105 and YS 120 engines
One of the other few nitro machines, this time a Rave ENV ready for some action Jamie Robertson in action. Check out that fantastic weather
Day One Groups... Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Group E
Group F
Group G
Group H
Duncan Osbourne
Simon Von Baur
Seabastian Gabbuti
Dunkan Bossion
Jamie Robertson
David Nolan
Timo Curlis
Mattie Lodge
Dave Fisher
Jose Luis Pardo Pla
Alexandre Bosso
Cyril Gelon
Adam Turner
Stephan Simmons
Benjamin Bosso
Tomas Klickanic
Juilio Member
Matt Gil
A Alcaina
Harry Driscoll
Pete Beborough
Pete Gray
Jack Bishop
Sebastian Duss
This was one of the Fleet Air Arm Museum staff, and I am led to believe the guy that runs the museum. He was very taken with the R/C heli action
With the initial round of flights out of the way it was clear the standard was extremely high. Many of these chaps had obviously been practising very hard. Normally at these events you can see a clear divide on the standards: the highest of high, very high and ‘should have gone to Spec-savers’. However, I have to say that on this occasion everyone did themselves proud with plenty of stunning flights. It’s interesting to note that a couple of pilots had clearly got there head around the competition and even backed off a little in the qualifying rounds of one flight versus the next, clearly playing safe, rightly so, and playing that ever so important tactical game. It has to also be noted that 90% of the field used electric machines and both the power and consistency these provided over the two days really showed why the electric
helicopters are so popular. We had a wide variety of machines in the competition, the smallest being Adam Turner’s Blade 500, then a Gaui X5 through to the larger T-Rex 700s and Rave ENV / Ballistic machines. The Nitro machines that did fly struggled with the day’s heat, but they still held in there and a couple of nitros did make it through to the finals. It would only be fair to also note that there were a couple of electric speed controller failures, due to overheating. The breaks were made up throughout the day with some top fixed-wing demo pilots using massive prop-hanging Extras, as well as a few very impressive jet powered flights. Horizon Hobby and John Norris took the opportunity to showcase the new Blade 130, 300 and 500 models. These RTF helicopter packages were opened up on
Westland are based very near this site. This Lynx helicopter took off to head for peacekeeping duties. Very big and very awesome Essential to the Zone is the music on the flight line and the pilots’ flights to music Check out the blue sky and the amazing site This machine was mid flight and in a very familiar position for the weekend which was knife edge and low, be this in a tick tock or at speed
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the flight line, checked and then flown very hard; proving that Horizon Hobby’s ‘out of the box’ concept works pretty darn fine! I think my favourite part of the day was seeing pilots taking advantage of the super smooth runway surface. There were many sliding auto-rotations and lots of fun ‘mid-flight’ with machines sliding along the runway, some of them inverted!
Sebastian Deuce had a tough weekend putting the machine in on more than one occasion just trying to push for that excitement and wow factor points, just a little too far
THE VILLAGE The evening spent back at the Zone village was simply awesome. The atmosphere was relaxed and everyone clearly enjoyed themselves: lots of food, flying, night flying and a whole head of beer later on in the evening: lovely jubbly! The Smith boys, however, had scuttled off back to base camp to total up the scores to find out who was through to the final 16 fly-offs on Sunday. Before 9.00pm, the results were produced and to be honest I don’t think there were any significant surprises. Everyone that deserved to go through got through. Those that didn’t still seemed pretty pleased as well. I didn’t hear any complaints, which again proves the concept. A great result for day one.
Final 16 1. Duncan Osbourn 2. Simon Von Baur 3. Seabastian Gabbuti 4. Dunkan Bossion 5. Jamie Robertson 6. David Nolan 7. Timo Curlis 8. Mattie Lodge
vs vs vs vs vs vs vs vs
Tomas Klickanic Benjamin Bosso Stephan Simmons Adam Turner Cyril Gelon Benjamin Bosso Jose Luis Pardo Pla Dave Fisher
Danny Lock, Adam Turner and Harry Driscoll, three of the Horizon UK heli flight team The new Blade 130’s first UK outing – we will have one soon but it looks perfect
The TSA Infusion was one of the few nitro machines in action, but it made it to the final 4 Duncan’s T-Rex 700 ready for action. It is surprisingly very standard with the all new DFC head but my god does this thing rock
DAY TWO: SUNDAY A few folks looked somewhat worse for wear on Sunday morning, but none of these were in the final 16. The weather was once again fantastic, but today the wind was flat calm, which made it interesting as with less wind than on day one, pilots would almost certainly be flying even closer to the edge! Those making it through had clearly turned up the heat. Duncan Osbourne was his usual super smooth self as he flew some amazing technical flights with fantastic accuracy. It was soon apparent that the marking and scores were getting tighter between pilots and some of these final 16 flights were very hard to call, but thanks to the judging criteria it was easy to distinguish some clear winners. With the morning’s flying complete, the organisers scurried away again to total up the scores; leaving certain nervous pilots waiting to see if they had done enough to make through. At this point we were treated to further great demo flights from Horizon Hobby, the fixed wings guys such as Thomas David and a pilot of a Thunder Tiger G4 who seemed to be doing a speed test along the concrete runway. I am led to believe this resulted in one of the most spectacular spankings of all time, ending up with battery packs speeding down the
runway as fast as the model did. When the final eight pilots were eventually announced, the tension really began to mount.
Final 8 1. Duncan Osbourne 2. Seabastian Gabbuti 3. Jamie Robertson 4. Timo Curlis Stuart Smith of Smith Brothers fame is one of the event’s founders
Matt Gill gives the event a big thumbs up
vs vs vs vs
Simon Von Baur Dunkan Bossion David Nolan Dave Fisher
The final eight rounds resulted in some of the closest flights in the competition, with the likes of Simon Von Baur banging in plenty of amazing moves to try to unsettle the ever-calm Duncan Osbourne. This included one of the most spectacular autos I have seen with a full on Blade stop which spooled back up into a roll and another flip at the bottom. Amazing stuff and truly pushing the limits. At this point judging became very difficult, as every pilot was so good in every aspect of the criteria. However, the final four were announced as:
Final 4 Nik Johnston our commentator for the weekend
1. Duncan Osbourne 2. Jamie Robertson
vs Dunkan Bossion vs Timo Curlis
All the guys were amazing and very hard to choose between, but Duncan Osbourne just lost out to Dunkan Bossion. Both pulled out very different styles and both scored very highly but Bossoin, who had the advantage of going second after winning the coin toss, clearly turned up the heat massively when he saw Duncan’s flight and was able to do all that was needed. The next biggest surprise for me was Timo Curlis and Jamie Robertson’s flights. Timo pulled all kinds of crazy new stuff and was so super accurate, scoring high with the crowd pleasing element and, from what I remember, a full on ‘headheight’ roll at the end of an auto. This left the final to play for with Jamie Robertson announced as the finalist along with Dunkan Boisson. Dunkan won the coin toss resulting in Jamie up first. This clearly puts the pressure on as the first guy needs to turn up the heat, however, too much heat, push it too far over the line and it’s all over. Jamie Robertson pulled out the music he used in an earlier routine and nailed an awesome flight. However Dunkan Boisson had made it to the final for a reason, whilst not as accurately in time to the music as Jamie, his last flight was simply stunning: lower, bolder, harder and sometimes more
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The first UK flight of the Blade 500X, out of the box and in public in the hands of Adam Turner
The victory flight pilots and the Zone number 1 and 2 for 2012
One of the fixed line displays, a nice break and some great flying
The UK’s Duncan Osbourn was on fire as usual
The Blade 500X spinning up ready for action The Blade 500X vertical in a dive
Team Gaui brought some X7s and X5s
This is just one of 50 stunning shots of the victory flight shared by Jamie Robertson and Duncan Boisson Jamie Robertson after just finishing his victory flight Opti-Power was a major sponsor
technical and, to be honest, before he took it he was well in with a chance of winning. I have to say that Jamie looked a little concerned that he hadn’t done enough and I suspect he had a lot more up his sleeve. So Dunkan took off and jeez did he mean business, he was on it. However, about 30 seconds to a minute into the flight he pushed just a little further than he should and spanked it! Jamie Robertson punched the air as he realised he was the clear winner! The best was yet to come though as they both flew a victory flight in tandem with some amazing results.
Final Results 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
Jamie Robertson Dunkan Bossion Duncan Osbourn Timo Curlis
CONCLUSIONS I loved this event for the following reasons: • A UK venue pulling international competitors • A fantastic competition site, with toilets, running water, a restaurant and a roof if needed • Somewhere to take the family for a day out
• A massive wide open space to fly • The weather was just superb • The knockout style is exciting • The judging style is spot on • It works • It feels professional • Some amazing flights from the world’s best – check them out on YouTube • Blade stop autos • Hardcore crashes • Sun burnt judges • Pete Gray looks like a bang tidy lady from behind! • Some Drunken Norwegians causing havoc • The night flying at the Zone Village All the Smith crew did an amazing job at this event. It’s not just Stuart and Adrian but also Graham (the little known but very tall older brother) Jane and Richard (Mum and Dad) and many others. Great job guys. Bring on 2013! To find out more about the Zone competition visit www.zoneformat.com
Jamie Cole Jamie Robertson and a Logo, a popular choice in the 2012 season and the ultimate 2012 winner
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